Two-year-olds learn novel nouns,verbs, and conventional actions from massed or distributed exposures

Two-year-old children were taught either 6 novel nouns, 6 novel verbs, or 6 novel actions over 1 month. In each condition, children were exposed to some items in massed presentations (on a single day) and some in distributed presentations (over the 2 weeks). Children's comprehension and production was tested at 3 intervals after training. In comprehension, children learned all types of items in all training conditions at all retention intervals. For production, the main findings were that (a) production was better for nonverbal actions than for either word type, (b) children produced more new nouns than verbs, (c) production of words was better following distributed than massed exposure, and (d) time to testing (immediate, 1 day, 1 week) did not affect retention. A follow-up study showed that the most important timing variable was the number of different days of exposure, with more days facilitating production. Results are discussed in terms of 2 key issues: (a) the domain-generality versus domain-specificity of processes of word learning and (b) the relative ease with which children learn nouns versus verbs.     

Are parents' gender schemas related to their children's gender-related cognitions? A meta-analysis

Meta-analyses were conducted of 43 articles (with 48 different samples) investigating the relationship between parents' gender schemas and their offspring's gender-related cognitions. The parents' offspring ranged in age from infancy to early adulthood. Offspring measures included gender self-concept, gender attitudes toward others, gender-related interests, and occupational attitudes. Overall, a small but meaningful effect size (r = .16) indicated a significant and positive correlation between parent gender schemas and offspring measures. Specifically, parents with more traditional gender schemas were more likely than parents with more nontraditional schemas to have offspring with gender-typed cognitions about themselves or others. In addition, the magnitudes of observed effect sizes were influenced by particular moderator variables, including type of parent gender schema (gender self-concept vs. gender attitudes toward others), type of offspring gender-related cognitions, parent gender, offspring gender, offspring age, and publication characteristics. The results are cautiously interpreted as suggesting a possible influence of parents on the development of their children's gender-related thinking.     

Racial bias in decisions made by mock jurors evaluating a case of sexual harassment

White (N = 161) and Black (N = 152) college students served as mock jurors in a simulated civil case in which a female plaintiff accused a male defendant of sexual harassment. The authors experimentally manipulated the race (Black or White) of the litigants and asked the mock jurors to decide whether the defendant was guilty; to rate the certainty of their belief in the defendant's guilt; and, when they judged the defendant guilty, to recommend an award to the plaintiff. Mock jurors of both races tended to favor litigants of their own race and their own gender. Racial bias was highest among White male jurors and lowest among White female jurors.     

Effects of lexicality and distinctiveness on repetition blindness

The repetition blindness (RB) paradigm developed by K. M. Arnell and P. Jolicoeur (1997) was used to examine effects of lexicality (word vs. nonword target pairs) and target distinctiveness on RB. Distinctiveness was manipulated by having both targets (Experiments 1 and 2) or only the first target (Experiment 3) brighter than nontarget items. All 3 experiments demonstrated strong RB for word targets but no RB for nonword targets. This confirms that RB depends on pre-existing memory representations. In fact, there was repetition facilitation for nonwords in Experiments 2 and 3. These experiments also demonstrated that RB is reduced when targets are distinctive. This finding is better understood interms of RB as a failure of memory rather than as a failure of perception.     

Gender role and personality disorders

Many researchers have hypothesized relationships between personality disorders and gender role (i.e., masculinity and femininity). However, research has not addressed if people who are masculine or feminine more often meet the criteria for personality disorders. The present study examined whether college students (N = 665, 60% women) higher in masculinity or femininity more often exhibited features of the 10 DSM-IV personality disorders. Feminine men exhibited more features of all the personality disorders except antisocial. Dependent traits were associated with higher femininity and lower masculinity. Antisocial traits were associated with masculinity. Both men and women who typically behaved consistent with their gender had more narcissistic and histrionic features, whereas participants who typically behaved unlike their gender had more features of the Cluster A personality disorders.     

Stem cell research: a target article collection: Part II--what's in a name: embryos,clones, and stem cells

In 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Human Cloning Prohibition Act" and President Bush announced his decision to allow only limited research on existing stem cell lines but not on "embryos." In contrast, the U.K. has explicitly authorized "therapeutic cloning." Much more will be said about bioethical, legal, and social implications, but subtleties of the science and careful definitions of terms have received much less consideration. Legislators and reporters struggle to discuss "cloning," "pluripotency," "stem cells," and "embryos," and whether "adult" are preferable to "embryonic" stem cells as research subjects. They profess to abhor "copying humans" or "killing embryos." Do they know what they are talking about? Do we? This paper explores the historical, philosophical, and scientific contexts that inform this heated discussion.     

When it hurts to be misled: A Stroop-like effect in a simple addition production task

In four experiments, subjects saw simple addition equations (e.g., 3 + 4 = 9) and produced the sums while ignoring the presented answer. If the presented answer was false, subjects took longer to produce the sum, as compared with when the presented answer was true (Experiment 1), when there was no answer presented (blanks; Experiment 2), when a letter was presented (Experiment 3), and when a symbol was presented (Experiment 4). The results suggest that subjects were unable to ignore the presented answers, which raises problems for theories of arithmetic verification (i.e., deciding whether 3 + 4 = 9 is true or false) that claim that subjects verify equations by first producing the sum and then comparing the produced sum with the presented answer. Our results are more compatible with theories that claim that in verification and production, an arithmetic knowledge base is used in different ways.     

Nature, culture, and explanations for erotic plasticity: reply to Andersen, Cyranowski, and Aarestad (2000) and Hyde and Durik (2000)

R. F. Baumeister's (2000) article on erotic plasticity was criticized by B. L. Andersen, J. M. Cyranowski, and S. Aarestad (2000) for not being biological enough and by J. S. Hyde and A. M. Durik (2000) for being too biological. Both critiques were based on drawing a polarized caricature of R. F. Baumeister's actual view, although the two caricatures are opposites. Actually, neither commentary questioned the gender difference R. F. Baumeister documented; rather, the dispute is about how to explain it, which is indeed a challenge remaining for further work. Although both commentaries provided valuable suggestions about how to approach an explanation, neither approach can provide a coherent account until various theoretical problems are resolved and seemingly contrary empirical findings are addressed.